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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26909686">Don't Leave</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/staymagical/pseuds/staymagical'>staymagical</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Keithtober 2020 [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Voltron: Legendary Defender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Universe, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Keith (Voltron) Angst, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:07:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,721</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26909686</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/staymagical/pseuds/staymagical</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The last thing Keith thought he'd be is Galra. But also the last thing he thought he's thought he'd ever do is leave Lance.</p>
<p>The universe doesn't care what he thinks.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Keith/Lance (Voltron)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Keithtober 2020 [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1958269</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>71</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Don't Leave</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For Keithtober Day 7: Galra</p>
<p>A day late but I finally finished it. Hadn't planned for it to get this long and yet, here we are. What can I say, I love me some good old angst.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>There’s something so serene about the way Lance sleeps.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sprawled across half the bed, limbs askew and body angled in such a fashion that it’s a wonder he doesn’t wake with aches and pains every morning. The castleship's running lights are just dim enough to highlight how his long dark lashes feather over warm darkened skin, his soft brown hair haloed on the pillow. He’s snuggled into the majority of the sheets they once shared, twisted up into the fabric until there’s nothing left for his bed partner.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But Keith somehow finds it endearing despite it all. Utterly beautiful and perfect, especially when he himself is tangled up in those limbs, Lance’s body curled around his own, warm breath against his nape. Utterly serene. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Someone Keith can call home. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Should have known it would never last. None of his homes ever did.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith shoulders his bag, the weight of it featherlight in comparison to the guilt and heartache bowing his back. He studies Lance one last time, desperately trying to commit every line and curve and angle to memory. Then he turns and silently heads for the door.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The word is naught but a whisper, soft and gravelly with the haze of sleep but it brings Keith and his breaking heart to a stuttering halt nonetheless, his hand on the door.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Excuses clog his throat, burning his tongue with their desire to get out, words strung together into poetic phrases of denial and reassurance but he swallows them down. There’s no hiding from this. For days he’s been dodging it, weaving through the loom of conversations and questions, side-eyed glances and glares sent his way. Resolutely ignoring the tension that’s been building between them all, but especially the one pulled taut between the person who holds his heart delicately in his hands.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lance doesn’t deserve this. Any of it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t leave,” Lance’s voice is stronger now but soaked in pleas and a deep resigned anguish Keith had been trying to avoid. Not for his own sake, but for Lance’s.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This wasn’t how he had meant for this to go. Slip into the night, a clean break, a chance for Lance to start anew, for the team to find someone worthy of being called the Red Paladin. Someone who didn’t have vile blood running through their veins.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Instead, he sighs, his heart tearing asunder as he turns to face his world. His universe. “Lance.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lance hasn’t moved, still sprawled across the bed all long-limbed and pliant with lingering sleep. But his face is drawn, pained, eyes gleaming in the dim light with a sheen of desperation. “Please,” he begs, voice breaking with more than exhaustion. “Please don’t leave.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith’s hand digs into the strap of his bag, tearing his gaze away from the pain he’s about to cause. “It’s for the best.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The words burn like acid on his tongue, sending agony lancing through his chest. He doesn’t want this, he never wanted this, but it needs to be done. This is his burden to bear, his problem. The last thing he wants is for Lance to be brought down with him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For any of them. It’s the only way.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sometimes it’s best to break a heart by your own hands than to watch it crumble out of your control.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“For who?” Lance sits up to lean on one hand, anger slowly setting his brow, drawing the soft pleading lines into sharp angles. He raises an eyebrow. “For you? For the team?” He pauses, his gaze burying into Keith’s skin and digging into the cracks in his heart. “For me?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith shuts his eyes against the torrent of emotions roiling in his chest but remains silent.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because you’re wrong,” Lance continues with vigor and fire and stone. “Allura will get over it. Shiro will learn and adapt and see you are the same as you’ve always been. But if you leave I don’t—” His voice sputters and chokes to a stop. Keith chances a glance up to witness a hint of Lance hollowed out and empty as he finishes with a hard cracking, “I won’t.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And that is so much worse than anything Keith could have imagined.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He believed that once he left, Lance would move on. Not right away, no, but eventually. He’d carry forward, live his life, and be better without a Galra to taint his every move and drag him down. And Keith could weather that. It would pain him until the end of his days but he would survive more or less. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But this, seeing the agony he was putting Lance through, the wounds Keith’s abandonment would leave behind, how they’d not only bleed but fester and infect and leave Lance nothing more than a shell until that too faded from existence. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That was Keith’s worst nightmare.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I won’t try and stop you if this is truly what you want,” Lance continues after a beat, voice drained and exhausted. “But I don’t think you do. I think it’s killing you as much as it would tear apart the rest of us. We need you, Keith. We love you, Galra blood and all.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But I’m one of them,” Keith says, voice low and sour with the self-hatred consuming him from the inside out. Vile, dirty, rotten. A poison that could turn deadly at any moment. “I’m part of the race that decimated Allura’s people, that tortured and imprisoned Shiro, that caused so much destruction and death and pain. How can anyone forgive that?!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because </span>
  <em>
    <span>you </span>
  </em>
  <span>haven’t.” Keith looks up at the hard edge in Lance's voice. He’s fully up right now on the bed, all his attention focused to assuring and convincing Keith. Perhaps he senses Keith's wavering conviction. Perhaps he knew from the start Keith never had it in him to leave Lance’s side. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re still a good person, strong and loyal and, yes, hot-headed and insanely reckless at times, but still </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span>. You’ve had Galra blood coursing through your veins your whole life. Knowledge of it now won’t change what you’ve done and who you already are. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Nothing has changed</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith sags back against the door, bag sliding off his shoulder as he lets his momentum carry him to the floor in a defeated slump. There’s no reason to fight it anymore. He’s not leaving, he can’t, not with Lance looking at him like he’s about to rip open his chest and tear apart his heart. Not when he knows now that neither of them will ever be able to recover from the fallout.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Silence follows, deafening after the strength of Lance’s conviction. Keith’s heart swells, wondering how he could have ever thought that leaving was his only option. That anywhere but with Lance was a viable alternative. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What if I do change?” Keith asks softly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lance shakes his head. “You won’t.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You don’t know that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I do.” Lance scowls with hard-pressed determination. “Because you have me, you have Hunk and Pidge and Shiro and Allura and Coran. You have all of us and we won’t let you stray.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith melts under Lance’s gaze, shoulders slumping until he’s hunched over his knees. When he speaks, his voice is tender and raw with exhaustion, “And if I do?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Then we’ll pull you back in,” Lance says without hesitation. Then, surprisingly, a smile pulls at his lips and his whole body softens. “I know it’s hard for you to understand but you’re not alone anymore. We are your family now and family sticks by one another through the good and the bad. Especially the bad. We’ve got you. I’m not saying it will be easy, problems are bound to arise, worse ones even. But just know that even if all else fails, you have me. Please don’t ever doubt that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tears burn at the corner of Keith’s eyes and he buries his head in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out, “you don’t deserve this.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s not up to you,” Lance says and his tone is laced with so much tender love that Keith can’t hold back his tears anymore, letting them fall unbidden down his cheeks. “I decide what I do and don’t deserve. This is my choice and don’t you ever try and take that away from me again. You want to leave? Go. But don’t leave for my sake or anyone else’s.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith nods uselessly into his arms, letting the silence draw out once more. From the bed, Lance remains just as quiet, seeming to sense Keith needs time to collect himself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Which he does, desperately. But he also needs Lance, his skin prickling with a need to touch and hold and <em>reassure himself</em>. Perhaps more desperately.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Finally, with a shuddering breath, Keith glances up and meets Lance's blue gaze, searching, begging. “I’m sorry.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lance just shakes his head, waving off Keith’s apology with a flippant hand, his own eyes glistening with unused tears. “Stop apologizing and come back to bed,” he chides, throwing back the sheets and patting the empty space Keith left beside him. “I’m cold.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That seems to dislodge the heavy weight in Keith’s chest and he huffs a gentle laugh. “You have most of the sheets,” he points out.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, but I need you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s a sentiment they share then. Slowly, Keith gets to his feet, leaving his discarded bag where it lays by the door. It’s unimportant at this point. He’s not leaving, and he suspects he won't be leaving anytime soon. Not if Lance has anything to say on the matter.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Galra or not, Lance seems to want him here. That’s more than enough.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He sheds his shirt and pants on his way, hopping the last few steps out of the legs before falling onto the bed. Lance’s arms are open and waiting and soon enough, Keith is cocooned in the warmth of sheets and soft silky skin, relieved sighs escaping as they snuggle against each other.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith presses his face against Lance’s neck, kissing the juncture where shoulder meets throat with affection and grateful reverence. “I love you,” he whispers into his skin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know.” Lance’s throat vibrates with his soft words and Keith closes his eyes, reveling in this feeling. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A feeling he almost lost. A feeling he took for granted. A feeling he promises to cherish for the rest of his days. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I love you too.”</span>
</p>
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